


Rapture

by izamun



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 11:09:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17866145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izamun/pseuds/izamun
Summary: Some things aren't meant to be touched upon.





	Rapture

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Rat King](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8104327) by [Rethira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rethira/pseuds/Rethira). 



> This started out as a spur in the moment kind of thing - I was so taken with Rethira's fic I simply couldn't NOT do something with it, and that something grew way over my head and turned into this. It's not meant to be read separately from the fic it was inspired by, so I strongly encourage you to read The Rat King first, or you'll find yourself missing out on a lot of excellent content as well as context.

Sly – she knows that it’s not his real name, but his real name is only used by his family as they search for him all the way from Tyvia – was the one who had told her where to go.

He had taught her how to find the gaps between the walls, the unseen entrances and exits all throughout the city. Unlike him, Gwyn is small, flexible, and, most importantly, utterly forgettable. She remembers asking him once if he hates the gods for making him look the way he does, but he laughed at that the same way he laughed at anything, if he laughed at all – hoarsely, without a speck of joy, malformed lips making it seem like he was grimacing. He had given no other answer.

(After hearing what she’d asked, Ivo had pinched her ears and then told her that fire, not gods, had resulted in that revolting appearance.)

Even so, Gwyn is sure Sly dislikes the gods. At least the real ones. He must, because he lets that stolen wolfhound hunt for rats and sometimes he goes to the docks and slaughterhouses just to watch the whales die. He avoids their bones like he’s afraid they might burn if he touches them, just like he avoids the little shrine that she put together with Ivo, even though she had invited him to visit it.

(Besides, she has seen burned men before, their scars pink or brown. Sly’s are somewhere in between, a dark red that fades into whatever unmarred skin remains. They’ve eaten from his lips and his ears and his nose, they bite into his hands and his back and his collarbone, but half his face looks normal and his pale yellow eyes still see just fine. Twice she has seen his scars turn oil whale blue, once black and glistening like tar. She knows Ivo would say, _you’re dreaming things up again_ or _it was probably just the light_ or _can’t you see i’m busy here?_ so she doesn’t tell him.)

“You’ll know when you get there,” Sly had told her while she watched his hound nip at his fingers. Dead skin doesn’t feel teeth. “There’ll be noise. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t.”

He doesn’t come with, not even to watch. Gwyn wonders if it has something to do with the absentminded way he bared his teeth when he said noise. Sure enough, she can tell once she hears it – the noise has a kind of pressure and intensity she’s not familiar with. It sounds like it could rattle skulls and walls and settle there. It sounds like the world is crumbling.

She finds a way in, as she always does, squeezing and squirming. She hides herself in a cranny high above from which she can observe unobserved, a crack someone forgot to cover up. She can feel rats press up against her ankles as they crawl over her toes, but she doesn’t dare to move. She doesn’t even dare to look, because looking would mean averting her eyes from _Him_.

The Protector. The Rat King. The god that her nan had taught her to pray to during those lonely nights when she felt helpless and abandoned.

The Chained Man.

He looks so human, and yet anything but. He’s dressed in purple robes embroidered with gold, much like the people surrounding him. Worshippers of the Outsider. It doesn’t seem right, but Gwyn’s too occupied with the scene unfolding before her to pay it any mind. She sees the mark, the thin black crown and the shape of a mask, but mostly, mostly she sees the hand that touches His face before wrenching the masked half away, and she can’t hear what’s being said over the ever-continuing noise, but she _can_ hear **Him**.

He sounds so human, and yet anything but.

Her first wish should be to free Him, even if the mere idea of herself freeing a god was as outlandish as the very scene playing out underneath her, but it doesn’t even cross her mind. Her thoughts are the chains around His wrists, her thoughts are the hand gripping His hair and pulling back His head, her thoughts are His clenched jaw and His eyes narrowed in pain. Her thoughts are _do gods bleed?_ and nothing else.

They raise the blade to His throat and air stops in hers.

(Her first wish should be to free Him.)

She shudders.

It is then she feels a sickening sensation start to creep up on her. Something in the air, all at once too cold against her skin, seeping through her clothes and flesh and into her bones. She instinctually shrinks into her little sanctuary as far as she dares, which isn’t very far at all. The noise that sounds like the world is crumbling ends with one sickening crack at the time and she can hear whales, louder than before. It’s worse. It’s so much worse. There is fear and anger and despair and awe all swirling together, forming one overwhelming emotion that has no name. It’s too big to comprehend, too big to contain; she can’t even move, her stomach and her mind are reeling, she’s gonna fall, _she’s gonna fall_ , and then –

He’s just **there**.

(He’s so small, so much smaller than any god had any right to be, but somehow he fills the entire room and Gwyn doesn’t feel like she’s about to fall anymore because she’s being crushed in place.)

There are no words to describe what she comes to witness. The world seems to shape itself around them. The taste of metal fills her mouth when she watches their lips join. Her knuckles are white from her tight grip – a grip that she won’t dare to release until long after the room has straightened itself out and even the rats have left.

When a few days later she tells Sly that she no longer believes gods exist, his misshapen lips curl into a bitter smile of understanding.

**Author's Note:**

> there is a hunger


End file.
